Presentation Psychology Articles

I’ve been involved in 100s of 6 figure deals but only 5 9 figure ones. One infrastructure bid ($2.6B), 4 IT outsourcing bids (all around $1.2B), well the clients won them all, we, as some of them like to point out only do the presentation and the pitch is so much more than just the final face to face. I have done one other bid worth this kind of money, and the client actually lost it TV sports rights for International Cricket.. but the team who won it, won it on price and subsequently went bust over it, thus proving that sometimes losing is the best result!

So I’m not sure how qualified I am to offer sage advice about winning 9 figure deals but my experience of them is that they are pretty much the same as 6 figure ones… and on those I’m pretty experienced, 76% hit rate on over 150 deals over the last 15 years.

So here are my 7:

Don’t bid

Don’t present

Don’t DIY

Don’t trust

Don’t play fair

Don’t preach

And whatever you do: Don’t use bullets

Perhaps I should explain:

Don’t bid

The last $Billion I worked on cost the bidder £4million, which even at a low percentage profit of say 5% is an amazing ROI but for each winner there are at least 2 losers, in the last one 6! And they didn’t get a good return; they got nothing (although I think some of them may have got fired!).

When I’m asked to join a bid team I try very hard to persuade them to No Bid. I rarely succeed, but the last few times I have, they eventually won the deal. Purchasing need to run a process and in order to run a process they need you to bid so especially if you are the market leader saying no generally gets an indignant “Why Not?” which gets us in at the ‘C’ suite to talk about why the bid is flawed and how as it is it will fail and how if they change the plan it will succeed and of course then, we would be happy to bid.

In my experience No Bidding fleshes out the real deals from the smoke screens, gains you access to the right people and allows you focus on the deals that are real and winnable rather than just desirable.

Don’t present

All too often presenting is a one way flow of information. The more dialogue you can get the easier it is to win. If the prospect wants to talk, let them. In fact we plan it, nurture it, manipulate it. People are much more likely to buy a plan they helped develop the more they feel ownership of it the more they buy into delivering it. We have had great success at getting prospects to join in, drawing the solution with the presenter. When at the next meeting the diagram is presented back to them.. the team hit a home run.

Don’t DIY

All that effort, all that time, all that money and you show up with home made slides.. Nothing says lack of commitment like DIY. Get professional help for the presentation, for the RFP, use designers, use coaches, use experts. As I like to point out when a client tells me that my fee is expensive.. it’s a dam sight cheaper than losing!

Don’t trust

Straight out of Sun Tsu, battles are won and lost on the quality of the intelligence you have. You never know the truth, you can never ask too many people for intel. Develop coaches, hire consultants, lobbyists, ex-prospect employees, current employees family; anything that can give you better intelligence. The ones that lose are the ones who think they know the truth.

Don’t play fair

Don’t throw away your integrity but winning is ALL that matters. I used to say “there are no prizes for second” but I now prefer Tiger Woods quote, “Second means you’re the best of the Losers!”

Don’t Preach

So winning a $Billion deal is a big thing, but so is spending a $Billion. The key decision maker probably has an ego the same size as yours. They want to be listened to, they want to talk and they want you to respond. Be wary of being sycophantic and remember you don’t get to the position anywhere where you have to make a $Billion decisions without being Very Smart, Very Ruthless or VERY VERY lucky.

Don’t use Bullets

Clearly doesn’t need an explanation, bullet-points are best left to the competition.

I’ve been thinking about the benefits to teachers or trainers of making their presentations more effective. Clearly for sales people it’s about winning more business, more profitably with less effort, but what about if you are not selling? I know, it’s a strange concept for someone like me who finds it difficult to open his mouth without pitching something, a project, an idea, or a joke but its true some people have to teach.

So why would you want your presentations to be more effective if you are teaching? Better attention from your students, higher levels of engagement, better levels of comprehension, shorter lecture times. Or how about a more erudite approach:

But the thought train led me to recall the best lecture I have ever had. Professor Smith at Nottingham University in September 1987 gave a lecture on standard distribution.. I know I didn’t want to go either but.. he started by having an orderly bring an armchair in the lecture theatre and said it was for later (Visual Cognitive Dissonance ™ at work dear reader, we all listened ) and then said he had two proofs to show us and proceeded to show us a premise and through a process of Induction (one type of mathematical proof the other principal one being Direct) and 6 chalkboards of equations that ended in the proof with a large QED written next to it.. “et voila” he said.. 45 mins into a 50 min lecture.

“Everybody got that?” He said and then rubbed out all but the first and last lines and said “and now for proof number two, For this you will need an armchair”, he pointed, “and a large brandy” which he revealed from under the counter, he sat in the chair took a sip of brandy and said.. “After an hour or so of contemplation like thus.. you will in actual fact discover that the conclusion is entirely obvious.. class dismissed..”

OMG.. Best lecturer I have ever seen and the best lecture I have ever seen and makes me think that actually the question ‘So why would you want your presentations to be more effective if you are teaching?’

Is the wrong one, it should be:

So why wouldn’t you want your presentations to be more effective if you are teaching?

And the answer is:

“After an hour or so of contemplation like thus.. you will in actual fact discover that the conclusion is entirely obvious.. class dismissed..”

Ineffective teaching is an oxymoron.. or perhaps the practice of morons!

2300 years ago Aristotle wrote that in order to persuade an audience a speaker needed to provide proof and that the most persuasive of speakers employed three different types of proof. Ethos which is personal credibility, Pathos an emotional argument and Logos which is a rational argument. We find the same thing when we are writing presentations for clients; we even often follow the same order.

Credibility. Sell yourself, your company and then your product in that order.

Empathy. Show an understanding of the audience’s needs, desires or issues.

Rational. Here’s why you should act, here’s evidence that acting will work.

The mistake we find more often than not is an over reliance on credibility. A presentation that last 45 minutes and spends 44 of them telling the audience how great the presenter’s organisation is. Sure it may in fact be interesting that you have 300 delivery trucks but do I really care? So What?

Most of our clients’ presentations (well the 15000 that are B2B sales presentations) follow this structure:

Who are we?

What do we do?

Why do you need it?

Why do you need it from us?

Can I have your business?

The credibility comes in the first section and usually fits on one slide. “What we do” is not normally a service description but more a results description (Improve your sales conversion rates by 30% rather than produce PowerPoint presentations) and then the presentations become about the audience not the presenter. Ethos followed quickly by Pathos concluded with logos.

We find presenting the emotional argument prior to the rational argument more effective since to quote Nixon “When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”

So humanity hasn’t changed much in 2300 years, same old same old. My problem is I can’t now read the name Aristotle with out hearing John Cleese and Michael Palin singing “Aristotle Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Socrates himself will be particularly missed, a nice little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed”

Last week I gave a presentation to an ISMM (Institute of Sales and Marketing Management) group in Leeds, UK. I haven’t done any of these for a while so was pretty critical of my performance afterwards. I debriefed with a colleague on the way home, too long, too slow, too many jokes. Lots of engagement afterwards but that’s to be expected when you’ve just removed somebodies crutch they need to understand how to walk again and want help.

In anticipation of a new blog.. here is one I wrote in 2009.. watch this space.. comments please!

Don’t use speaker notes.

Don’t write scripts.

Don’t wear white socks.

Why? Because you will come across as an amature!

Occasionally when presenters use a script they end up concentrating on it more than on the audience, which is a recipe for disaster. Presentations need to be dynamic and audience-centered. A script, almost by definition, prevents dynamism by compelling you to follow it. Therein lies the real problem.. Continue reading →